Expert on Hurricane Forecasting Models
University of Rhode Island
University of Rhode Island College of Engineering Professor Ali Shafqat Akanda and a team of researchers have developed an application for smartphones called CholeraMap to serve as an early warning device for cholera.
The University of Rhode Island has established an endowed scholarship for undergraduates in the field of neuroscience. The scholarship is named in honor of James Tim Rosaforte III ’77, an accomplished sports journalist and author well known in the world of professional golf. Rosaforte retired last year after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, following a distinguished 40-year career in newspapers and television.
Each of the 13 students in URI Assistant Professor Justin Richard’s class is assigned a chicken and is instructed to train it to do several required behaviors, as well as other behaviors the students choose themselves. All train the birds to understand that when they hear a clicker, a food reward will be delivered. They also train the birds to peck at a target. Some students are also training their chickens to get on a scale to be weighed, identify a particular color, or jump through a hoop.
University of Rhode Island Professor of Education Sara Sweetman helped build the foundation for success of PBS Kids show Elinor Wonders Why™ among others
The answers to many of life’s mysteries have been discovered far below the surface of the seas. However, getting to those depths has not been easy. Thanks to a new fiber optic reel system invented by Brennan Phillips, an assistant professor of ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island, deep-sea exploration is about to get much more affordable and accessible.
Data collected by University of Rhode Island Professor Stéphan Grilli and his colleagues will appear in Nature Communications, which is considered one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journals.
The Board of Trustees of the University of Rhode Island has announced the selection of Professor Marc B. Parlange, provost and senior vice president of Monash University in Australia, as URI’s 12th president. He will succeed David M. Dooley, who joined URI in July 2009 and has overseen the transformation of URI into a leading research institution with a growing recognition of programs of distinction. Parlange’s appointment is effective Aug. 1.
URI chemical engineering professor embeds nanosensors in microfibers to create ‘smart bandage’
Researchers from the University of Rhode Island and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have teamed up to perfect a fast, accurate test combining the use of a solid-state nanopore and machine learning to verify the identity and purity of synthetic heparan sulfate
Graduate students Tabatha Hartshorn and Kendra Graham aim to prevent, treat repetitive motion injuries, especially in swimmers
Backed by a three-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, URI Prof. Krishna Venkatasubramanian is researching computer authentication problems faced by people with upper extremity impairment with a goal of developing software that allows users to more easily access their devices. Venkatasubramanian is collaborating with TechACCESS of Rhode Island, which provides assistive technology services for people with disabilities.
The 2020 election is all but complete, but a team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island is still crunching the numbers – not the number of votes, but the statistics used to determine the efficiency of in-person voting in Rhode Island, Nebraska and Los Angeles.
Doug Sawyer was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, 11 years ago.
Poring over decades of existing research, University of Rhode Island Professor Holly Dunsworth has reevaluated and rewritten the narrow, reigning theories for sex differences in height and pelvic width in a new paper, “Expanding the evolutionary explanations for sex differences in the human skeleton.” The paper, published online by the journal Evolutionary Anthropology, maps out the critical role of estrogen production on bone growth in men and women.
The University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of Communication and Media hosts the Taricani Lecture Series on First Amendment Rights. The series, which will be streamed live, opens Tuesday, June 16, with award-winning journalists and authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. The three-part, virtual lecture series honors the memory of veteran Rhode Island newsman Jim Taricani, who died June 21, 2019, at the age of 69.
KINGSTON, R.I. – MAY 11, 2020 – The University of Rhode has announced the appointment of NASA scientist Paula S. Bontempi as dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography. An alumna of GSO and a biological oceanographer for more than 25 years, Bontempi joins URI from the Earth Science Division, Science Mission Directorate of NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.
A study led by the University of Rhode Island has found that preschool children who interacted with multimedia learning materials created for the PBS KIDS show The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!™ provided opportunities to learn about science for all participating children.
Krishna Venkatasubramanian, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Rhode Island, is looking for a way to help through technology. Venkatasubramanian has teamed with the Massachusetts Disabled Persons Protection Commission to develop an app-based tool to help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities better report sexual abuse.
KINGSTON, R.I. — February 20, 2020, — The University of Rhode Island has announced a new degree and certificate initiative, URI Online, which provides students and professionals access to a URI education anywhere and anytime across the globe. URI Online offers fully-online undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs designed to meet the global challenges of today’s workforce and the needs of tomorrow’s professionals.
The five-year, $5 million Atlas of Retinal Imaging in Alzheimer’s Study (ARIAS) is sponsored by BayCare Health System’s Morton Plant Hospital and St. Anthony’s Hospital and funded largely by Morton Plant Mease Health Care Foundation and St. Anthony’s Hospital Foundation in Pinellas County, Florida.
Jason Dwyer, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Rhode Island, has won an internationally recognized Innovation Award for his advancements in single-molecule nanopore sensing from the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies at its annual SciX Conference in Palm Springs, California, in October.
KINGSTON, R.I. – November 6, 2019 – Saffron is the world’s most expensive spice, selling for about $5,000 per pound at wholesale rates, and 90 percent of the global saffron harvest comes from Iran. But University of Rhode Island agriculture researchers have found that Ocean State farms have the potential to get a share of the market as demand for saffron in the United States grows.
KINGSTON, R.I. – July 24, 2019 – The University of Rhode Island is leading a team that has been awarded a $3 million 5-year collaborative research grant from the National Science Foundation as part of its investment in 10 Big Ideas to serve the nation’s future. Funded through NSF’s Understanding the Rules of Life: Epigenetics program, researchers will work to better understand how changes in nutrition and energy through symbiosis can influence epigenetic changes in corals, and what it may mean for coral ecology.
University of Rhode Island anthropology professor Holly Dunsworth and four geneticists refute a common analogy comparing dog breeds with human races in a peer-reviewed, scholarly paper published by the online journal Evolution: Education and Outreach.
Scientists with a NASA-led expedition are operating from the Inner Space Center at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography as colleagues explore the deep Pacific Ocean to prepare to search for life in deep space.
University of Rhode Island Professor of Sociology Melanie Brasher, who earned her master’s and Ph.D. in sociology from Duke University, is a demographer who is fascinated by the topic of birthrate. Brasher, an expert in population aging who has also conducted research on unintended births and health, addressed several questions on the CDC findings – factors behind the decline, possible concerns for the future, and the historical significance of the decline.
Rollo-Koster is the author of eight books on the papacy. She was interviewed by a number of media outlets following the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and was featured in a Time.com story in the spring of 2019 about Game of Thrones.
KINGSTON, R.I., – May 6, 2019 – The University of Rhode Island will lead a new $94 million consortium to support ocean exploration, responsible resource management, improved scientific understanding of the deep sea and strengthen the nation’s Blue Economy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today.
KINGSTON, R.I. – April 30, 2019 – As the Trump Administration prepares to cut in half the budget for the National Invasive Species Council, a group of invasive species experts led by a University of Rhode Island professor has issued a warning about the growing peril of biological invasions and the increasing threat they pose to the economy, environment, public health and national security.
Student research trip aboard R/V Endeavor, notice of media availability and remote interview capabilities
Like “Star Wars,” URI Professor Joelle Rollo-Koster has used “GOT” in class to explain aristocratic feuds of 12th and 13th century France and England, including this semester in Western Europe in the High Middle Ages. Simply, she wonders if students’ ability to follow the labyrinth of shifting alliances in “Game of Thrones” can be transferred to following the dynastic intricacies of medieval Europe.
Little is known about the inner structure of the moon, but a major step forward was made by a University of Rhode Island scientist who conducted experiments that enabled her to determine the temperature at the boundary of the moon’s core and mantle.
University of Rhode Island Professor Julie Keller's book, “Milking in the Shadows,” published in January by Rutgers University Press and the first book in its Inequality at Work series, looks at the Mexican migrants’ journeys from villages in Veracruz to dairy farms in the Upper Midwest.
A five-minute delay in the clamping of healthy infants’ umbilical cords results in increased iron stores and brain myelin in areas important for early-life functional development, a new University of Rhode Island nursing study has found.
Joëlle Rollo-Koster, a history professor at the University of Rhode Island, is heading an international team of scholars that is creating a landmark work on the history of the papacy commissioned by Cambridge University Press.
Four University of Rhode Island ocean engineering students demonstrated that they not only could keep a 3D printer level while at sea, but they could replicate a piece of equipment that works as effectively as the original. Josh Allder, Grady Bolan, Sean Nagle and Allison Redington were granted this rare opportunity last semester aboard the Okeanos Explorer, a research vessel operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
In a pioneering clinical trial that will attack Alzheimer’s disease by targeting inflammation in the brain’s blood vessels, researchers at the George & Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience have received regulatory approval to initiate the BEACON Study.
The recent eruption of Anak Krakatau – which means “son of Krakatau” – is providing URI researchers Stephan Grilli and Steven Carey with a new opportunity to gain additional insights and create models that they hope will help the United States better prepare for future tsunamis.
URI Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) students can apply to Johnson & Wales’ Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies (MSPAS) program after completing their fourth year of the six-year pharmacy program. Applications began in the spring.
Scientists with a NASA-led expedition are operating from the Inner Space Center at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography as colleagues explore the deep Pacific Ocean to prepare to search for life in deep space.
In 2008, a contaminant eluded the quality safeguards in the pharmaceutical industry and infiltrated a large portion of the supply of the popular blood thinner heparin, sickening hundreds and killing about 100 in the U.S.
Jason Kolbe has been thinking about hurricanes and lizards for many years. The University of Rhode Island professor of biological sciences has measured the length of lizard legs and the size of their toe pads to assess how those factors influence the animal’s ability to cling to vegetation during strong storms. He even used a powerful leaf blower to test his hypotheses in a laboratory.
Four scientists from the University of Rhode Island are among 100 researchers from 30 institutions who shipped out of Seattle today to embark on a month-long expedition to study microscopic organisms that live deep in the ocean and play a critical role in removing carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere.
Contrary to popular belief across college campuses, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications may fail to improve cognition in healthy students and actually can impair functioning, according to a study by researchers at the University of Rhode Island and Brown University.
The open ocean is the largest and least explored environment on Earth, estimated to hold up to a million species that have yet to be described. However, many of those organisms are soft-bodied — like jellyfish, squid, and octopus — and are difficult to capture for study with existing underwater tools, which all too frequently damage or destroy them.